Today in the lunch line...

Today at work, I was feeling cranky for no reason. Usually when this happens it means I'm hungry. When I took stock of the situation today, I realized that this was the case. So I go to the Cougareat. (Hateful place. But I hadn't gone grocery shopping in weeks.) I'm about to get into the Taco Bell line when a huge group of people right in from of me makes the split decision to do the same. I move on. Italian looks fine. I get in line, and the guy at the end of line gives me a weird look. I probably give him a weird look back. A few moments later he explains: He had gotten in line while it was really long, and for ten minutes or so no one had gotten in line after him. He thought he was the last person on campus who wanted Italian until I came along. Ah. I nod understandingly. He then proceeds to flirt vigorously. My responses are monosyllabic (i'm cranky after all), but I can see that he is not totally disingenuous. And he is kind of cute, I finally notice. He is too busy flirting to notice that all of a sudden it is his turn to order (oops) so he lets me go ahead. Chivalrous. I'm still cranky, but not as. And i'm about to eat a calzone. how bad can life be.

As I walk away with my tray, I secretly hope this isn't the end of our brief association and that we will magically sit at the same table or something or, or... But it is, and we don't. And I eat alone. And it is probably for the best since I was cranky anyway.

If my life were a movie, we'd run into each other again randomly. I'd drop my books, and--and there he'd be to help me pick them up! Alas, i don't carry books in my hand. And my life is not a movie.

(Damn.)

Being Boaz

The number of people staying at the Thomas household this holiday season necessitated some unusual sleeping arrangements. John and Mary had to sleep with Finnegan in their room, which meant a lot of interrupted sleep. The four other older kids all crammed their skinny little bodies into another room. And since the two rooms upstairs (formerly bedrooms) have been turned into studies, that left the smallest bedroom in the house to be split between three adult girls. Hmm...

The bed is a trundle bed; that took care of two people. So, at the foot of the bed, into the like two square feet of floor space that was left over once the trundle bed was rolled out, we pinched and squeezed and squished one more green pad to accommodate a third party.

And thus we slept: Christina on the main bed (because she was there first), me on the trundle (which is a little hard, but reasonably comfortable) and poor Sue relegated to the poor pinched, squeezed and squished green pad at the foot of our beds. On Christmas Eve, when the three of us found ourselves for the first time in this, shall we say, inelegant arrangement, it was hard not to draw biblical allusions. "You're just like Ruth," I tell Sue as she lays herself down on the pad at my feet. "Well, goodnight, Boaz," she says.

(I decided not to remind her that by ancient Israel's standards, she was actually proposing marriage.)

My Kind of Crazy

People must think I am crazy because I often walk around muttering quietly under my breath. The truth is...well...the truth is that I am slightly crazy. Isn't every artist? i caught myself doing it again today as I was driving home from the Pizza Factory. (i almost always talk to myself while driving since I am almost always in the car by myself.) I actually had to stop myself mid-sentence as i was getting out of the car, to make sure no one was around. it was freezing cold, so no one WAS around, fortunately. That being the case, I started my dialog again. Dialog, you say? He he. Now you're really convinced that I've lost it.
I often have dialog from the story I am writing running through my head. To say it out loud helps me solidify the idea. I then go somewhere (my laptop) where I can write it down. But in the meantime, I have to speak it to remember it. And even if I don't write down exactly what i was saying, it helps me generate new ideas.

So yes. As I said, isn't every artist a little crazy? Don't you have to be to be passionate about something? Well...that's judging by most people's perception of "crazy." And anyway, if the price of being passionate about certain things is merely that some people think i'm slightly odd, I really couldn't care less. but, um, i do attempt to keep my writerly behavior at a minimum in public. Just, you know, to maintain at least the outward semblance of normalcy.

p.s. Dad just installed surround sound and a subwoofer downstairs. Movie-watching capabilities at the Thomas household--in spite of the tiny screen--are now officially awesome.

My, um, non-final. As it were.

Today i had the pleasant surprise of walking into my 7 p.m. Shakespeare final and finding a fine spread of pizzas laid out at the front of the classroom. Minutes later our professor announced that if our grade percentage was at a point that we were fine with we had the option of not taking the final and just staying with the grade we had. he then invited us to take a piece of pizza, maybe a cup of rootbeer, and just consider what we wanted to do individually.

Dared i hope...? I discreetly let myself out of the room, dashed upstairs to one of the computer labs, logged into my account, and quickly ascertained that (at a cool, and unexpected 97%!!!!) i would, in fact, have time to stop at the library tonight. With a spring in my step, i went back down to the classroom, helped myself to a piece of Costco pizza, gathered my things, thanked my professor and slipped away. Maybe it is my instinctive laziness that kept me from feeling even slightly miffed about the several days spent arduously studying for a test i didn't take. I'm just too grateful.

A Collaborative Effort

L, A, K and I (that's me), having decided that facts have not been reported as they ought, have collaborated in an ongoing project of writing and propagating revisionist history. We feel that Mad Libs is the most professional vehicle for our project. Here are the first installments.

#1
Paul Revere was born in Boston, Louisiana, in 1735. His father taught him to work with metals, and he soon became a pithy dragonfly. He was a soldier in the French and Czech War and was at the famous Boston Carpet Party when Americans dressed up as Indians dumped tons of liquid snow (i.e. water) into the ocean. On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere waited in the North Pole for a signal light from a church tower. The signal was to be one if by beer bottle, two if by dollar. When he got the message, he mounted his faithful bumblebee and rode off serendipitously. On his way, he kept yelling, “The cocoas are coming! The cocoas are coming!” This was the beginning of the American War for Independence from King Gerard Way.

#2
Although he was Emperor of France, Napoleon Bonaparte was actually a Corsican, born on a small guitar in the Mediterranean Sea. When he was just ten years old, Napoleon was sent to a military Hogwarts school in France, where his sparkly stature earned him the nickname of “The Drunken Corporal.” At 24, he was made a nervous General and married Josephine, the daughter of a well-known Parisian conch. Soon after that, he defeated the Italians at the battle of Arivederci (sp?) and in 1804 was named Emperor of all the impressions. But he made a secret mistake and attacked Russia. He reached Moscow, but the imps had burned all their invisibility cloaks and his men got frozen games. In 1914, he was farded (this means to put make-up on while driving) and sent to Elba. But a year later he came back to France and for 100 days was again the Wizard. However, he was defeated at Waterloo and imprisoned on the island of St. Helena, a primitive place which resembled the Goblin City.

Wife vs. Secretary

I can't shake this movie. I'm not going to write very much about it, because if anyone's planning on seeing it, I don't want to spoil it. But, suffice it so say, i always find it interesting when an old film such as this--under the guise of "romantic comedy"--tackles such serious, universal issues like infidelity, and does so poignantly. In some ways, I think social statements made through the medium of comedy or lightheartedness pack more punch than their Drama counterparts.

I did want to highlight just one scene from the end: the moment where Jean Harlow and Myrna Loy--the secretary and the wife--run into each other at the office. Their eyes meet, and in that brief moment, we don't need them to say anything to know exactly what conversation their having. It is very bittersweet, serious moment.

I wish I could talk more about it here, but if anybody's interested, watch the film and then we will talk. It's no Citizen Kane, but at least for me it was though-provoking. Pay special attention to the way Gable interacts with both his wife and his secretary.

Apples to Apples

I lost miserably today. I only got three cards and everybody else had like seven. I'm a failure. I'll stick to pears from now on.